Sometimes I find myself baffled by the Japanese school system. They often do things quite differenly from America, and no one really explains it to me, so I just wonder around confused. The beginning of the new school year is apprently one of these times.
First of all, Japanese teachers get transferred between school fairly frequently. I hear the average is something like 6 years at one school before a transfer, but it varies. Teachers however, don’t know they are getting transferred until roughly 2 weeks beforehand. Thus, 2 weeks ago I was in the Board of Education the day all the tranfers were passed out. Principals from all the schools come and get an envelope with all the transfers for their schools. They then go back and tell the concerned teachers.
I hadn’t been back to my Jr. High since then, so Today (the first day of the new school year) I was in for all sorts of surprises.
1. My desk has moved from the front with the 3nensei teachers, to the back with the 1nensei teachers.
2. I only see 2 of my 6 JTEs. This is because
3. 17 teachers are getting transferred. In the morning, we have a small ceremony to say goodbye. Of course, this means
4. 21 new teachers. 4 new JTEs who have all introduced themselves and seem nice. We have a ceremony for them too.
5. Opening cermony I have done before, so it was nothing new. Except at one point a line of teachers went up to be introduced. The VP gestured that I should go to, which surprised me. Basically I just didn’t know what the hell is going on and it was apparently funny cuz a bunch of kids laughed. It would have been really embarrassing if I didn’t know the kids already.
The new 1nensei don’t come for a few more days. Today the new 2 and 3nensei got their new class assignments. It will be strange to teach whole new class dynamics, but I’m excited.
We also got a new supervisor last week so who knows how that will go.
It seems like the next few days will be filled with confusing ceremonies, but we’ll see what happens.
